lodestar
by ScribeOfRED
Summary: The moon takes and the moon takes and sometimes the moon gives.


The moon, hung high over her head, is usually so large out here, but tonight it's a glimmer at best, wrapped up in a thick blanket of clouds.

Normally the darkness would be a blessing, but normally Nyx is here with her.

Living out in the wilderness would have never been Lunafreya's first choice, but between the empire's inability to keep its word over even the simplest promise and an assigned guard who's proved more loyal than them all combined, she's found it's not as bad as she imagined. Their tiny homestead is no palace or citadel, but Nyx treats her every single day like the princess she no longer is, in his own particular way.

Every day she is grateful anew for his steady presence, his knowledge of how to survive days after she would have succumbed to the weather or the wild beasts or the long-lasting pursuit they only recently seemed to outrun, his willingness to treat her as an equal when there are hard tasks to be done or decisions to be made. He protects her, but he doesn't shelter her.

Their house is a tiny thing, barely more than a pre-existing hunting shed in the middle of countless miles of dense forest, once crumbling into rotten pieces, now shored up and made watertight by blurred-together days of work. He taught her how to string vines and branches across the walls and roof to obscure it from prying eyes, how to catch and kill and prepare small game, what plants can supplement their meager meals, methods for ensuring not a single scrap of what little they have goes to waste. Each day is filled to the brim with the bare necessities for survival, and although it's been a harsh transition, he's made it so much easier than it would have been had she attempted this alone. He's saved her more times than she can count now, and she offers prayers to the moon each night, ardent gratitude for bringing him into her life when she needed him most.

Her prayers are ever more fervent when he's on an extended hunting trip. He doesn't like bringing down prey of significant size near their home—near her—when doing so will only attract more predators, and while she understands his reasoning, it galls her that they can't go together, that even with her developing survival skills she'd only slow him down. She's improving, yes, but not fast enough.

So she snatches one minute here, two minutes there, stolen moments of time between crucial work where she dedicates herself to her own training, building her capabilities, her strength, her stamina, her knowledge. She will not be left behind forever.

Though he tries never to leave for more than a day at the most at a time, the hours he's gone stretch out, filled with silence where normally there is quiet speech, empty patches of forest where normally there are shared looks. The trees around their current, empty-without-him home take on a gnarled, looming quality, leering at her rather than guarding over them.

As long as he's safe, she does her best not to mind their whispers of woe, taking what opportunities she can between the litany of chores that has become her life to send forth prayers of safety for him, wherever he might be. So far, they have not returned to her void.

But he has never before been late.

He said early this morning that he would be back before the sun set. Twilight came and went several hours ago, and though she's weary down to her bones, she maintains both her grip on her trident and her vigil sitting outside the recessed entry to their shack, the fire banked low for the night at her feet as she peers out into the forest, still all smudged shades of black and gray despite her long watch. The dead hours of the night have set in, with only a cloud-shrouded crescent moon for company, and it isn't a very good conversationalist. It just absorbs and absorbs and absorbs her ceaseless benedictions, growing fat each month on her devotion to interceding.

She wishes Nyx would come home. Prays that he comes home.

The nocturnal bugs that have taken to quietly trilling in the nearby trees going silent is her first warning that something—someone—approaches. Fisting her hands around the night-cool haft of her weapon, she rises to her full height and forces herself not to look too intently in a single direction, head tilted as she listens, hoping, fearing, prayers a constant upon her lips.

A roughly whispered "Pythia" is her second warning, and her trident hits the ground as her heart soars and her feet fly, carrying her toward the origin of the all-clear code and greeting rolled into one. He's alive, _he's alive_, returned to her by grace once more.

Twigs and leaves crunch underfoot, the sounds violent after so long spent in silence, and as though their reunion was foretold by the heavens themselves, the clouds part, spilling forth a chill measure of moonlight just as Nyx steps into the tiny clearing.

No, not steps, Luna realizes as beams of silver catch dull in knotted braids. He _staggers_, as though the sudden illumination is too much for him to bear, and then her hands are upon his chest and he's falling, crashing into her with such weight that not even her newfound strength enables her to hold him upright.

The ground shakes when they land upon their knees, shakes again when a sack of something large and solid and smelling of metallic flesh thuds and rolls away behind him, but her arms are full of shaking Nyx, his hands fisted in her clothing to tearing, her shoulder a pillow for a forehead that's much too hot, cracked whispers of "Pythia, Pythia, safe, Pythia" drowning out the roar of her own pulse as he leans into her like a weary pilgrim who's risked everything to reach the object of his desires.

"It's me, Nyx, I'm here," she assures him, but he doesn't seem to hear her; already his hands are going slack, as though holding on requires energy he's insisting he spend on speaking instead. _Safe_, he keeps insisting, but is it the truth or a wish? The forest seems silent around them, but the trees here are mercurial, treacherous, and all she can rely on is the proof that Nyx will do anything to keep her from harm. He would not bring danger upon her, not if it cost him his last breath, and she loves him and hates him for it.

"Hush now, you're safe." She wraps her arms around him, ready to guide him up to his feet and inside for deserved rest, but her hand meets tacky cool and Nyx _whines_, a broken noise ground into her collar and straight through to her heart as he goes rigid, then gasps and pants and shakes like a dog that's run for hours without respite.

"What is it?" she asks, hand hovering over the wound even though they're a moment away from tipping over. "Nyx, what happened?"

But he's coughing, terrible, wrenching heaves that seem to be turning his insides out, a fear that becomes reality when he chokes, leaning away from her as he loses whatever food he's recently consumed.

Inside will have to wait—she instead drags him away from the mess and closer to the fire, pulling off her fur wrap and pressing him upon it with one hand while with the other she drags the stacked kindling closer, dumping a loose handful of woodchips upon the coals before shaking Nyx's shoulder, the one that isn't bleeding. "What happened?" she repeats, already fumbling to peel his clothing aside as the first glimpses of pale light flicker to life.

Between ragged breathing and vague mumbling, she discerns the words _engine_ and _bullet_ and briefly is aware of her fingertips going numb. Imperials.

Her gaze snaps up to the forest, searching, but her night vision has been ruined by the guttering fire. Either they're going to be stormed, captured, dragged away, maybe killed, or Nyx is telling the truth.

Her instincts say the latter, but she finds herself returning to the familiarity of her supplications once more, wisps of intervention, of begging, of pleading, all curling into the air like smoke between sparks of impatience and fear as she bares a shoulder she's admired so often to the light. It's bloody and torn and made worse when she feeds more wood to the flames, a savage streak across the meat of his shoulder.

Nyx groans, head rolling first to one side, then to the other. "Still... inside..."

A quick check reveals no exit wound on the front of his body, and her stomach sinks to join him somewhere in the dirt. She cannot heal him until it comes out.

"I'll be right back." Whether he hears her or not is something she can but guess, though perhaps he does, because he's still lying where she left him when she returns with water and a few bundled scraps of cloth and the smallest of their knives. Sweat glistens on his skin, the loose ends of his hair stuck to his neck, and at least half of his breaths come out fractured, splintering around the edges as infection and pain wage war on his body.

"Here." She folds a strip of cloth over and slips it between his teeth, taking but a moment to stroke her thumb over rough stubble. Maybe it's just the temperamental firelight, the stress, the lateness of the hour playing tricks on her, but she fancies he smiles, just a flicker of one, and it reassures her in a way she cannot quite identify, restores some warmth to the tips of her fingers. "I'll be swift."

He mumbles something she has no choice but to take as assent. Adding another piece of wood to the fire is a risk she's willing to take if it'll afford her more light by which to work, even if it has the potential to make them an easier target. Trust. She must trust him, addled though his mind might be. Her prayers are their best hope for safety now—not that they protected him earlier, but she doesn't have time for her faith to waver, not now, not when the familiar curved syllables, worn soft from hours and years of use, are the only thing keeping her eyes focused and her fingers steady around the hilt of the knife.

_Protect us_, she whispers as she kneels across his arm and the middle of his back.

_Spare us_, she whispers as she wipes the wound a final time and lowers the knife.

_I beg of you, as your humble servant, grant us the strength and the grace to see your plans through_, she whispers as she pierces flesh.

_Spare him_, she pleads as he bucks beneath her, his scream thick around the fabric in his mouth. It almost drowns out the squelch of ripped flesh, slicked with fresh blood, but then the knife comes free and hot, wet metal finds its way into fingers that are no longer steady.

Choking on a breath that's lasted forever, she throws the bullet into the fire and lifts herself off his straining back, dark prints left behind on glistening shoulder when she rests her palm over the hole she had to carve into him. He's rigid, breaths more like sobs that are already tapering off into muffled noises wrung through with exhaustion and pain. "It's all right, Nyx, you're all right, it's over now."

_Heal him_, she whispers as she trickles her life into his, energy dripping from her fingers to knit the damaged fabric of his being back into a smooth whole.

As his trembling eases, hers worsens, until half the water spills over her own hands when she washes the blood from his skin. A dab of honey over the remaining wound, barely more than a scratch, ensures it will be spared further complications; already he looks at ease, brow only lightly creased and his jaw loose enough that she has little trouble coaxing the cloth, wet but unbloodied, from his mouth.

Weariness tugs at her body, deeper, darker than a mere missed few hours of sleep, the loss of a small part of herself she'll never fully regain. She doesn't mind. The exchange of some of her own vitality for his life is a price she will pay until she has nothing left to give.

When she reaches for the scattered items to return them to their proper places, he proves he isn't as senseless as he appears, his fingers hooking in the edge of her clothing, the soft thrill of his touch stilling her as effectively as a command. "Luna..."

Her hand finds his, the curl of his fingers around hers like coming home. The trembles don't stop, but they do ease, chased away by his touch. Were he not sprawled on his front, she would throw herself into his arms. "I'm here. I'm here."

The way his eyes crinkle, her favorite way he knows how to smile back, silences all of her prayers but one—the most important of all.

_Thank you for your mercy, for returning him to me, for his life. Thank you again and again and again for your gracious benevolence_.

And the moon, hung high above their heads, brightens just a little more.


End file.
